Comviva to offer mobile financial services globally on hosted SaaS model

Gurgaon-headquartered mobile app and value added services (VAS) company Comviva Technologies Ltd will now provide mobiquity, a mobile financial platform, as a hosted SaaS model.

Comviva claims that the new model will ensure reduced operational costs, faster time to market and a fully managed mobile financial platform for banks, financial Institutions and network operators in Asia, Africa, Americas and Europe. Moreover, the benefits will be extended to the partners in the ecosystem, retailers or merchants/billers and end-consumers, and that can result in the rapid uptake of mobile payment services in these countries.

Srinivas Nidugondi, head (mobile financial solutions) at Comviva said, "Today, approximately 35 per cent of mobile phone users have no access to formal financial services. In a world with seven billion people, there are over six billion mobile phone connections, but only 1.8 billion bank accounts. Comviva's mobiquity mobile financial platform on a hosted model will enable banks and mobile operators to address this major market gap by delivering affordable financial services to unbanked and underserved segments.

"Comviva's new offering is to drive threefold benefits – provide greater access to banking services for under-banked segments, enable small & medium banks to remain competitive and maximise the reach, and boost proliferation of mobile financial services among service providers including mobile network operators, retailers and other network providers, for greater consumer outreach," he added.

According to the company, its mobiquity mobile financial solution is deployed by more than 55 service providers and banks across the globe, enabling over 490 million end customers across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East to access mobile financial services. In February this year, it launched Hola!, an application to access social networking sites (like Facebook and Twitter), e-mail and popular Web feeds via the mobile phone.

Around the same time, Comviva announced a strategic partnership with MasterCard to launch what it calls a first-of-its-kind open loop mobile money partnership programme. Under this partnership, Comviva and MasterCard customers can access all major financial services via their mobile phones.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)